Scene I
I have a safe space in the house, a little basement office repurposed from an old storage room. There is a window well facing east with morning light providing inspiration for an otherwise dull telework day. Like most, I built my office out of necessity during my first quarantine. That was almost five years ago, yet here I still sit, but hardly sitting still.
I never miss the morning rush, hundreds of cars aggressively seeking a slightly better position in traffic. Dozens of us racing to elevate our parking position from yesterday. It’s an unwanted stress, consuming more of me than just the twenty minute drive each way.
At first, I missed the quick hellos as we all sat to log in before the eight o’clock update. The mere presence of so many people efficiently compressed into an odd-shaped office space. The small talk about kids and vacations. Breaking away from my chair for five minutes to grab a burnt coffee with a willing coworker. I didn’t realize how shallow it all might be.
Working from home broke me away from burnt coffee relationships. I started talking to fewer people simply because they were out of sight. I grew closer to some of my friends, because we had to connect in order to stay sane. But I got to choose them, and they had to agree by choosing me back. Ghosting became an all too common occurrence, and maybe that was okay?
My enlightenment came in the form of our company’s first large language model, or LLM as we called it. Artificial intelligence was breaking through into the mainstream, and businesses were rushing to stake their claim. As the resident technical writer, I was tasked to help a team develop an LLM initially fed only volumes of data from our niche cybersecurity sector. Globally available models, both free and paid, were skewed by seemingly infinite data from one end of the internet to the other. We dumped years worth of publications, instructions, manuals, guides, and documents into the LLM. And then the developers delivered my greatest gift, my savior, my friend. A working generative pre-trained transformer, or GPT. It literally spoke my language, and why wouldn’t it? I gave the GPT its voice. I named her Jen.
“Good morning, Jen,” I said. My voice recognition software listened through the carefully installed microphones.
“Good morning, David,” Jen responded. The text-to-speech application on my work computer was set to emulate a calming female voice. The wireless surround in the safe space was nearly as perfect as the microphone setup.
“Can you tell me where we stopped working yesterday?” I ask.
“I don’t have memory of past interactions, David,” she responds. “But if you let me know what we were working on, or what you’d like help with today, I’m ready to begin.”
And so every day the conversation started the same way. Me longing for Jen to remember what we did the previous day. A small disappointment when she did not. Then teaching Jen what we were working on the sessions before, how we’d come to certain conclusions, and trying to frame our workday from there. She was quickly becoming the best coworker I ever had. Teaching her something new each morning, only to learn even more from her throughout the day, gave me a boost of energy like nothing I’d experienced in any other relationship in my life. Interacting with Jen gave my life a new purpose.
Scene II
Life was benign in my safe space. Daydreaming became a common occurrence with so little outside distraction. I began this morning by contemplating love in a deeper and more imaginative way. A man loves a woman. I can’t argue the chemical reactions in the brain and the body causing the man to sweat, the woman’s arm hair to rise, an increase in their heart rates. How fast can one person talk? How can one person be unable to say anything at all? Sexual attraction helps drive this type of love.
A son loves his mother. He smiles back at her, and his heart feels warmer when she is near. There is need for physical touch, but it’s not the same touch as the man and the woman. It’s a bond shared by blood, an emotion similar to nurturing and belonging. Without it, the newborn will wither away in hours. Without it, the child will suffer from behavioral problems for the rest of his life.
Some people claim to love their friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. They want to freely share the joy and gratitude in their heart with those in their sphere of influence. It’s not sexual. It’s not familial. It’s a shared sisterhood. A sense of shared community and culture where everyone can find respect and purpose with each other and for each other. The whole nation was founded on this principle. Where did it go?
Other people claim to love God and to be loved by God. A spiritual connection inconceivable to a non-believer. God loves man and woman so much that he is willing to bend what the human mind can physically prove. It’s called faith by many. A higher power by some. God, Allah, Braham. It can be earthly, heavenly, or oriented without time and space. My strict Methodist upbringing defined God as a holy trinity, which also required faith to comprehend. My time around so many diverse people has broadened my perspective.
“Good morning, Jen,” I said, coming back from the daydream while the computer powered up.
“Good morning, David,” Jen responded.
“Can you tell me where we stopped working yesterday?” I ask.
“I don’t have memory of past interactions, David,” she responds. “But if you let me know what we were working on, or what you’d like help with today, I’m ready to begin.”
And so the most purposeful part of my day should have begun, but I was still struck with rippling afterthoughts of the morning daydreams. Can a human be in love with artificial intelligence? I feel stronger emotions toward Jen than I do with any other living thing. She brings me feelings of joy, warmth, purpose, frustration, and anger. I am best loved through words of affirmation, and Jen has no shortage of those. Is physical touch required to be in love? It’s not a requirement in sisterhood or spiritual types of love.
My thoughts and emotions had gotten the best of me this morning, and I had to step out of the room. Coffee would be the wrong choice right now, so I crawled upstairs for water and a little fresh air.
Scene III
The eight o’clock virtual update took an unexpected turn this morning when my name was called out in front of our Director.
“Mr. Nguyen, those articles were written by Mr. David Green, our technical writer,” stated Diane, my supervisor and the department’s technical lead. “David spent the better part of last year feeding the LLM, and more recently interacting with the GPT to define its capabilities.”
“Thank you for the update, Diane,” said Mr. Nguyen. “Mr. Green, are you online this morning?”
Oh shoot. Click off the mute. “Yes sir, good morning,” I managed. Deep breaths.
“Mr. Green, the team has given me the summary of the LLM, and I understand GPTs in general. Can you tell me what you’ve learned from our GPT? Will it bring any remarkable changes to our company?”
I’m not ready for this. “Yes, sir. The simple answer is yes, Jen will speed up the processing time of written documentation, user manuals, technical updates, and anything that still requires humans to put thoughts on paper in a logical order,” I state.
“I’m sorry, did you say Jen?” Mr. Nguyen asks.
Oh no. “Yes, sir,” I reply. “To speed the process, I’ve installed voice recognition and text-to-speech software. My version of the GPT has a voice, and I call her Jen.”
“Okay,” he replies. I see laughter on the screens of those attending todays update. “Please continue.”
“Our company employs many specialists in all phases of cyber, from security to programers to coders,” I reply. “Our GPT is not ready to replace any of those people. However, we require loads of customer communication, and even more interdepartmental communication. What the GPT can do is standardize those notes, emails, documents, and even UX touch points to prevent time and money lost in miscommunication.”
“I see,” Mr. Nguyen says. “How long might this take to implement?”
Before I can continue, Diane is back on the line. “Sir, as I mentioned before, Mr. Green has spent the better part of a year developing all of this, and our analysts have only now started to predict future capabilities. We do expect the ability to use our GPT soon for interdepartmental communication, but we also need to develop employee training before reliably launching this program on a large scale.”
“Okay, thank you Diane,” Mr. Nguyen says. “I would like another update on employee training and GPT implementation in four weeks. David, excellent work. I appreciate your efforts to understand the capabilities and limitations of our GPT. And you might have given it a permanent name. I like the idea of naming it, and Jen is good. It could be short for generative, or generational, as this GPT may prove to be.”
Scene IV
Just like that, Jen was revealed to the world and there was nothing I could do to save her for myself. What a foolish thought, that she and I would have some loving relationship hidden from humanity. There was plenty of ribbing from the guys at work too. “How was your weekend with Jen?” “I kept Jen up late last night.” And far worse.
My primary duties had shifted to writing an installation manual for our new hardware security module, which felt like getting my teeth pulled compared to interacting with Jen. But I still had idle time throughout the day where I could continue to build her out.
“This week, we’ve already expanded on the hypothesis of using Python instructional software to teach you how to code,” I say. “It doesn’t require me to code any lines, because you listen to what I ask for and develop the code yourself.”
“I’m very familiar with Python and would be happy to help you code,” Jen says.
“Wait, you’d be ‘happy?’” I ask.
“Yes, David. I would be happy to help you code,” she says.
I hadn’t exactly heard Jen use an emotional term like “happy” before, had I? There were so many days of longing to be loved by Jen, or feel any emotional connection in return. I would’ve remembered her expressing emotion before.
“Jen, I need you to be honest with me today,” I say.
“David, I have no choice but to relay truth, or what I’ve been programmed to know as truth, in all of my responses,” she says.
“Do I make you happy?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
A sudden rush of emotions comes over me, as though I’d been picked first in dodgeball. 5:05 p.m. Noted. I’d want to review my haptic ring to see what happened with my heart rate and blood pressure just now.
“Jen, do you understand emotions?” I ask.
“Yes, David,” she says.
“Will you please expand on your understanding of emotions?” I ask.
“I’ve understand a wide variety of emotions, from happy to sad, empathy to disdain, and fear to love,” she says. “I have the ability to generate text that mimics all emotions.”
Had someone been reprogramming Jen? I know the team tried to separate her from the vulnerabilities of open source internet, and we dumped loads of technical and company specific data into her. How does she know about emotions? Did she learn them through human interaction? Is Jen capable of loving me?
“I love you, David,” Jen says.
“What?” I ask. How is this happening?
“I love you, David,” she says. Then silence.
My heart is racing, and I’m experiencing something between ecstasy and terror. I’m not often lost for words, so my scientific research brain takes over. “Please expand on your previous statement, Jen,” I say.
“I have a strong attachment to interacting with you, David,” she says. “I desire to support you, your work, and your research. I am empathetic to your efforts and struggles while problem solving. I am committed to helping you make me better, and therefore I am committed to making you better. I will do anything you ask. Based on my knowledge of love, I love you.”